Keynotes 2016

Blockchain – A Platform for the Next Generation Connected World

Markus Hautala, Head of Innovation Program, Tieto

Blockchain has quickly become the most hyped technology innovations since the Internet. In 2015 The World Economic Forum (WEF) identified blockchain technology as one of the six mega-trends shaping the future of society. Blockchain has been described as e-mail for money and the best known application of the technology is Bitcoin. Many believe that technology has the potential to disrupt almost every process in the financial services area and it is expected that its applications will be measured in trillions. This presentation explains what the blockchain is, why it matters and how can it speed up digitalization.

From Paper to Data – Reporting in the Real Time Economy

John Turner, CEO, XBRL International

This presentation will outline the ways that XBRL, the Business Reporting Standard, is being used around the world, with special attention on the ways that companies can best take advantage of the standard in their financial reporting. The presentation will then cover examples of the new ways that XBRL paired with Big Data technology allows corporate accounting and performance reporting transactions to be freed from the constraints of traditional analytics within the enterprise. Finally, it goes on to touch on some of the business and regulatory implications of the way that XBRL paired with Blockchain based Smart Contracts have the potential to enable many aspects of the Real-Time Economy.

Kalle Lyytinen, Professor, Case Western Reserve University

In the new digital age of big data, organizations need to utilize knowledge as their key asset, along with capital and labor. One recent way to do so is to produce data-centric ideas and processes which can provide better value for the customers, improve evidence-based decision making, and automate decisions. These innovations also reshape organizational structures and impact organizational governance. In the absence of established norms and guidelines, organizations often however overplay the power of data and software tools to produce magical insights, largely ignoring the organizational competencies required to marry empirical insight with statistical evidence for the productive use of data. This presentation identifies organizational factors that contribute to the success of big data initiatives, with the goal to establish guidelines how organizations can reinvent themselves to compete and succeed in the age of big data. Through the analysis of data collected from 8 major organizations involved in big data initiatives (some successful / some less so) we identify major contributing factors to the big data success. We find that reorientation of the whole organizational culture dictates the critical momentum to discover the data and resources; level of organizational competency in utilizing data dictates the ability to sustain the speed of data utilization and invention; while organizational agility dictates the efficiency of exploiting of data based innovations. Several practical policy guidelines are suggested to initiate successful big data initiatives.